A Nigerian man based in Pennsylvania, Adepoju Babatunde Salako, has been sentenced to an additional 18 months imprisonment in the United States after pleading guilty to wire fraud linked to an Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) fraud scheme.
According to U.S. court documents, Salako fraudulently obtained personal information belonging to several Alaska residents and used the details to file seven fake applications for Permanent Fund Dividend payments between January and February 2022.
Investigators said the suspect created email accounts linked to the victims and gained unauthorised access to their “myAlaska” online profiles.
Authorities said he altered contact and banking information on the accounts in an attempt to divert payments to bank accounts under his control.
The investigation further revealed that Salako used a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to conceal his actual location and make the fraudulent applications appear to originate from Alaska.
However, digital records later traced parts of the activity to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Officials of the Alaska Department of Revenue detected the suspicious applications and rejected them before any payments were processed.
Authorities estimated that the scheme could have cost the state and intended victims nearly 23,000 dollars if successful.
Salako pleaded guilty to seven counts of wire fraud.
The sentence will run concurrently with an earlier 78-month prison sentence imposed in Colorado over separate COVID-19 relief fraud and international money laundering offences involving 2.5 million dollars in restitution.
Reacting to the conviction, U.S. Attorney Michael J. Heyman said the defendant invested considerable effort in planning the fraud scheme.
“Mr. Salako spent considerable time planning and perpetrating his scheme to defraud the Alaska PFD.
“Thanks to the great work of the Alaska Department of Revenue and FBI, he didn’t succeed; but even attempting to defraud the PFD will not be tolerated and could result in federal prison,” Heyman said.
